Eurgh... the roof is leaking and the constant dripping's driving me mental!
And the guy can't come out to fix it until next week. (And have you seen the weather at the moment - absolutely persistantly! And hailstones too!)

In happier news... announcing the first Bradan Press book... wahey!
It's called Slow Motion Wars and it's a collection of rather funky stories written by Andrew Hook and Allen Ashley. We'll be launching it at Fcon so pop along and buy one! I'll get order details up on the site as soon as we've got them firmed up...

H&N (again)

Needless to say, I hate writing rejection notes. Sometimes the stories get rejected because, although the story is well written, it's just not to my taste. I'm not much of a fan of slow, moody pieces - and this includes classic style ghost stories; traditional epic fantasy has to have something special for me to say yes to it; romance? bah, humbug!
Give me snappy, fun stories. Things that move fast. Anything with sarcastic humour sneaking around it. Adventures and monsters and really weird things. Things that made me laugh out loud. Things that entertain.

Of course, sometimes it's just a case that the author is taking forever to get to a point, using 8 paragraphs where 2 would do. And over-long sentences... oy, I hate those.

Get to your point. Don't waste words. A little atmosphere building is fine, but there comes a time when you need to get on with the story.

And, at the moment, short stories have a better chance than longer ones.

Rant over :->

H&N

Having a good submissions-reading day today! I've managed to read my way through all of December's stuff. The stats...

Read, liked, onto 2nd stage reading to work out where & when it's going - 4
Read, not sure, could go either way, need to re-read - 6
Accepted & replied to - 6
Rejected - 12

Open Night was fun! Apparently it was one of the smaller ones, so a bit on the quiet side. But I spent most of the time chatting with Andew Hook and Allen Ashley about something we're bringing out at Fcon. We're still working out details, but it'll be the first Bradan Press book thing. Wahey! More news on that when we're further along with it!

Fcon meanderings...

And another thing... we just got the latest Fcon attendee stats from our Debs and we've got twice the amount people we usually have at this time of year. Blimey!
Granted, we usually only have a mere handful of folks at this time of year, so double the amount is only in the late 40s... but still.... we're excited! (It doesn't take much!)

Yay! BFS open night tonight!

Quite looking forward to it as I've never been to one. It's the words Pub and London that usually put me off of going, but what the hey. How many near missess with buses can one city throw at you?

Email, bah, humbug...

So it seems the technical problems are not, in fact, down to the server people. It's something to do with my PC (oh now there's a BIG surprise...) Luckily I can still access the emails off of webmail on someone elses machine (as my machine won't even let me go near the website... double bah!) so all is not lost!

BFS recommendations

See, I knew there was something else I should be babbling about... after seeing the absolutely shameless shouting messrs Pendragon Press, Gray Friar Press, Elastic Press and Desmondo of Nemonymous have been doing on the TTA boards, I'm reminded that the BFS reccommendations for the awards are upon us..
(You'd think I'd have twigged since I spent the weekend stuffing envelopes with the forms in, wouldn't you..)

So, all you BFS members, if you want to recommend any stories for the awards, both Issue 5/6 & Issue 7 are eligible as they both came out in 2005.
Stories eligible for you to recommend are:

Issue 5/6:
Guitar Heroes - Simon Kewin
Blooming Britain - Leila Eadie
Fear of Fitness - John Llewellyn Probert
The Autumn Beast - Michael D. Winkle
Better and Better - John B. Rosenman
Charlie the Quantum Computer - Sarah Dobbs
Choices - Justin Thorne
For Old Times’ Sake - Gary Couzens
Humpback IV - Mark Anthony Brennan
Greenleaves - Davin Ireland
From Freak to Unique - Steve Dean
Lorna - Alasdair Stuart
Modern Life - Jason J. Stevenson
The Mermaid’s Tears - Steve Lockley
Lost - Paul Bates
Mokey - Kay Green
The Pan!c Foundation - Arthur Lyte
Rainmaker on the Run - Jetse de Vries
Seeing Red - John Graham
She Who Controls the Wind - Ken Goldman
Alan Smithee Lives in Hell - Matthew S. Rotundo
Burning Bush - Jennifer Pelland
The Green Man - Paul McAvoy
They Let You Live - Ian Hunter
Calling the Tuna - John B. Rosenman
Unicorn - Gary McMahon
When the Lights Go Out - Eugie Foster

Issue 7:

Big Brother - Gary Fry
The Stone Prince - Barbara Davies
Flickering Pictures Hypnotise - Simon Kewin
My Friend is a Lesbian Zombie - Eugie Foster
Stength in Numbers - Frank Roger
Eliza - Bev Vincent
A Sordid Boom - Ian Creasey
Dear Sirs - Robert J. Santa
Daisy Strikes Back - James Brindle
The Seat - Francis Duffy
Habitation Without Representation - Laird Long
Oriental Mist - James S. Dorr
Omegalpha - Frank Roger
Field Trip - Stuart Young
Pick Me Up - David Murphy
Like Tears, Cast in the Steps of Her Mother - Gerard Houarner
Philip K. Sheckley's Astounding Discovery - Frank Roger

And feel free to recommend H&N in the Small Press category too :-> Not that we'll win when we're up against all those other small press peeps, but it would be nice to make the short list...

More technical problems... if you've sent anything to the bradanpress email in the last couple of days, I've not got it as the server for that address seems to be doing weird things.
Meantime, the majorarcana addy is working fine, so re-send stuff to that one please (or use prism at britishfantasysociety dot org dot uk.. as that one forwards to my majorarcana one)